One of our regular board game group’s recent acquisitions is Race for the Galaxy, a card game which has something of a superficial resemblance to the Puerto Rico spinoff San Juan, albeit with more of a sci-fi theme and some slightly different mechanics. I’m aware there are some people out there who don’t particularly rate this game that much, but we’ve been enjoying it a lot — particularly with one of the expansions in tow, which adds some extra “goal” cards as additional means of earning points.
Race for the Galaxy’s mechanics are pretty straightforward, and the sci-fi theme is, to be honest, largely irrelevant, much as the “colonist” theme in San Juan is. Each turn consists of every player picking one of several different possible “actions” to perform, and everyone gets to perform the actions everyone picked — though anyone who actually chose the action card in question gets a bonus of some description.
The aim is to build up a “tableau” of cards on the table consisting of planets and developments, each of which offer various benefits to the different action phases, and each of which is also worth a certain number of points at the game’s end. Essentially, you want to ensure you have cards on the table that have you ready to take advantage of pretty much any situation as it comes up — one of the reasons we like the game a little more than San Juan so far is because there’s seemingly a wider variety of routes to success than the main two seen in San Juan.
I also like it because I won a game of it this evening, which is not something that happens all that often so should probably be celebrated!
Discover more from I'm Not Doctor Who
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
